Record-breaking heavy rains, driven by an autumn rain front and a typhoon, have lashed eastern Honshu, Japan, leading to a series of damages.

Iwaki City in Fukushima Prefecture, where torrential rain fell early this morning (September 7).

The roof of a car is visible beneath the water filling an underground roadway.

A report of a submerged vehicle was received by the fire department at around 7:45 a.m. today. A woman in her 60s was rescued and rushed to the hospital, but she was confirmed dead.

This underground roadway had been designated as a "flood-risk area" by Fukushima Prefecture, but it appears the damage could not be prevented due to the sudden downpour overnight.

Previously, during the "record-breaking heavy rain" that struck Chiba Prefecture on August 13, 4 out of the 13 fatalities died inside submerged vehicles.

Authorities are scrambling to implement countermeasures, such as installing automatic barriers that block vehicles from entering underground roadways once rainfall exceeds a certain level {struggling to devise measures such as installing automatic access barriers}.

Some areas in Oamishirasato City, where entire neighborhoods were nearly submerged during the heavy rain in Chiba Prefecture last month, suffered further damage as a convenience store parking lot was flooded.

In Chiba City, following the record-breaking heavy rain last month, "preventive traffic restrictions" introduced by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism were implemented for the first time nationwide to block vehicle traffic at underground intersections.

In Niijima Village, an island community located in the Izu Islands south of Tokyo, a record 430 millimeters of rain fell over a 24-hour period, prompting the issuance of a Level 5 Emergency Warning for sediment disasters, the highest level of alert.

[Hosomi Takuya / Forecast Division Director, Japan Meteorological Agency: With a life-threatening situation imminent, please secure your safety immediately.]

The Meteorological Agency warned the public to prepare for disasters, stating that linear precipitation bands are likely to form in the Kanto, Tokai, and Tohoku regions until tomorrow morning.

(Reported by Mun Junmo, Video by Moon Hyun-jin, Video Editing by Lee Hong-myung, Produced by SBS Digital News)